Compact Well Shuttle

Mitigating Risks Associated with Conventional Wireline

The Compact™ Well Shuttle houses logging tools inside the drillpipe, protecting them during tripping, and deploys them into the open hole after reaching total depth. This technique enables rotation, reciprocation, and circulation of the drillpipe, as needed, to accommodate specific well conditions. Logging with the Compact well shuttle is particularly advantageous in extended-reach wells, permitting data acquisition in a single pass versus the multiple passes required during conventional pipe-conveyed logging.

When the bottomhole assembly (BHA) reaches total depth (TD), the tools are released into the open hole, landing in a no-go arrangement. The drillpipe is then tripped out of the hole while the logging tools acquire data, which is available for download upon recovery at the surface. As the drillpipe is pulled to the surface, data are recorded against time, which is subsequently time-depth matched to create conventional depth logs. A shuttle float valve is normally added to the BHA to enhance well control and to prevent debris from fouling the deployment mechanism.

For challenging boreholes, the Compact drop-off (CDO) technique entails lowering an open-ended drillpipe with a special BHA to the bottom of the well. Compact tools are then conveyed on wireline through the pipe and released into the BHA’s landing sub. As with the well shuttle, they acquire data in memory mode when the drillpipe is tripped to surface. At any time during this operation, the tools can be retrieved with wireline.